AIR SPARGING. Haaris Iqbal, Calvin O’Keefe and Graham Ransom. The purpose of the air sparging experiment was to see which ground type, soil or sand, received the most benefit from air sparging. In order to simulate air sparging, two flasks, a pump and multiple tubes were used in setting up the system. Each flask had either soil or sand in it with a contaminant, in this case gasoline, below the surface of the ‘ground’ and the other flask had activated carbon, which was used to capture the sparged air. The pump would then pump air throughout the system and the excess air would leave out the other end. The results garnered from the experiment showed that the activated carbon did indeed capture sparged air, but not all of it. The flask of either soil or sand had lost slightly more weight than the activated carbon gained, suggesting that the sparged air simply passed through the system rather than being caught. Some inconsistencies stem from the use of different pump speeds throughout the experiment and different durations for sparging between the two ground types. The findings of this experiment suggest that air sparging is a viable method of cleaning contaminants from an underground area as the contaminants were captured successfully in the system that was set up. Both ground types received the benefits of air sparging, with the soil flask losing slightly more weight than the sand flask, showing that soil, rather than sand, is better suited for air sparging.
Keywords: Air Sparging, Henry’s Law, activated carbon, soil, sand, remediation, gasoline, benzene
Data Set 1: Soil and Water (Control)
Data Set 2: Soil, Water and Gasoline
Data Set 3: Sand and Water (Control)
Data Set 4: Sand, Water and Gasoline